In The Sight of These Hills (Dolan Twins)

In an October Afternoon

Chapter 1: In an October Afternoon

3 weeks earlier

There were simple facts in the world. Early morning the sun would rise in the East, and float across the sky, and every night it would set in the West. There was the moon that went through its lunar cycle, the stars that shined brighter in the country than they did in the city, and there was death and taxes. These were simple, concrete.

And there was Ethan and Grayson, and then there was the rest of the world. In their world it was just them. When they were eight, they had been playing in the light of the setting sun.

"I betcha can't get me, Gray," Ethan had teased playfully, his smaller body moving through the trees with a child's precision. Grayson had followed, face red from playing so long on a nice Saturday.

"Yes, I can," he had yelled in a way to show that he could yell, that he had a voice. He was laughing. Then he had hurt himself. He had slipped on a patch of grass, and a stick sliced into the thin flesh of his arm. He had cried out as the blood bloomed, and hearing this Ethan stopped, scared, going into the direction of his brother. Finding him knelt on the ground, clutching his arm, he dived to his side.

"Are you okay?"

"No, it hurts," Gray sniffed, tears streaming down his face and Ethan, despite Grayson being bigger than him, placed his small hand over the bloody wound, and used his other arm to help lift Gray off the ground. They had walked all the way home, Ethan giving small words of comfort, and Grayson shaking into his side, scared that somehow he would bleed to death and leave Ethan all alone.

Ethan, not at all a doctor, had tried to bandage him up the best he could, his little fingers wrapping the white gauze around his brother's bloody arm, as Gray sat on the closed toilet seat of their bathroom.

"E," Gray had wined softly, the red soaking in, more tears pouring down.

"It's okay, G, I've got you."

And Ethan had wrapped his arms around him, and Grayson clung to him like a life line.

Because when you're eight anything can seem like a life and death situation.

Because when you're eight you can love unconditionally, fully, as though you can't breathe without the other person.

In that bathroom, under the glow of the white ceiling light, that was their world. Sean, their father, would later find them there on the cold bathroom floor, rolls of bandages this way and that, his twins clinging to each other, Grayson still hiccuping from crying. Ethan would be rubbing soothing circles into his back because he was a good brother and that's what good brothers did.

When they had been thirteen they moved to a new town called Morrison across Jersey where they didn't know anyone.

It was a decent size town, this Morrison, and had plenty of lush woods and greenery. Miles and miles of woods, in fact, and that was thrilling for Ethan and Grayson, because they at least had found the feeling of home in those high trees, in the soft whisper of those woods, the way the birds would flutter their soft wings, how the air smelled impossibly fresh, like heaven.

They used to have friends back home. They used to play sports and smile in yearbook pictures and invite people to their birthday party. But that world was a long way from Morrison where people seemed stuck on themselves, cold, clickish, and opposing to outsiders. Everyone in town seemed to know each other. Most teenagers had been friends with each other since they were in diapers.